Adobe Reader DC repeatedly hanging/not responding for multiple users

[CoryIT]

Hi,

Within the past month or two, many of our users on our 2012 R2 remote desktop servers, have been reporting issues using Adobe Reader DC to open PDF documents.

The primary symptom that has been reported, is that upon opening a document, Reader will hang in a "Not Responding" state for anywhere around 30 seconds, before recovering and operating normally.

Most of the time, users report that upon closing and reopening the same document immediately, there is no issue.

Due to the application not crashing, there don't appear to be any events being recorded in event viewer, nor any logs for us to interrogate to determine the cause.

We have removed Reader completely from all of our RD servers and reinstalled, with seemingly no effect.

Has anyone else recently been seeing the same behaviour, or have any clues what is causing this out of the blue?

We are unable to reliably replicate when shadowing the users, and if we cannot find a solution, we may be forced to ditch Adobe in favour of something like Nitro's free reader.

Thanks

James

[CoryIT]

Anyone able to help us please?

[CoryIT]

Is anyone able to help us, or are Adobe able to provide some direct support?

[AnandSri]

Hello CoryIT,

I am sorry for the trouble you had and for the delayed response to your query.

Please install the latest patch available of Adobe Reader DC 19.010.20098 from help>check for updates, reboot/logoff the machine if possible and check.

navigate to Adobe Reader's Preferences from Edit>Preferences>Security(enhanced)> Disable 'Protected mode at startup' and 'Enhanced security'>click OK, restart the application and check.

Note: Disabling the Protected mode and Enhanced security is only for testing purpose, please enable it back.

Go to Edit-> Preferences -> Security (Enhanced) and check if "Run in AppContainer" is enabled or disabled.

If Adobe Reader is still freezing with the latest update, then take a dump of the process. Go to task manager; right click on AcroRd32.exe and click on create the dump file.

Share the dump file by direct/private message only. To send a private message, refer to How Do I Send Private Message

let us know how it goes and share your observation.

Thanks,

Anand Sri.

[CoryIT]

Hello,

We are already running that version/build, and the servers are rebooted nightly.

Protected view is off, but enhanced security is on. I will ask some of our affected users to disable this to monitor for any change.

Run in app container is also disabled.

If issues persist after disabling enhanced security, I will send a process dump.

Many thanks

James

[CoryIT]

Hi,

We have asked several affected users to complete the above settings change, sadly with no effect.

We will now ask them to create a process dump and send that to you.

Many thanks.

James

[CoryIT]

Hello,

Has there been any update in investigating the process dumps we collected and sent?

Many thanks

James